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Amazon announced today<\/a> that it\u2019s pumping another $4 billion into Claude AI maker Anthropic, bringing its total funding amount to $8 billion. This latest round follows $1.25 billion last September and another $2.75 billion in March.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Along with the money, Amazon wrote in its blog post that Amazon Web Services (AWS) would be named Anthropic\u2019s \u201cprimary\u00a0training\u00a0partner\u201d and that the OpenAI rival would use Trainium<\/a> and Inferentia chips for future models.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The investment and deeper partnership align with previous reporting by Reuters<\/em><\/a> <\/em>that Claude will power Amazon\u2019s new Alexa voice assistant. The improved Alexa \u2014 the release of which has been delayed \u2014 reportedly performed better with Claude than it did when using Amazon\u2019s in-house model. The release of the revamped Alexa feature is now slated for 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Amazon is at risk of falling further behind in the AI arms race compared to competitors like Microsoft and OpenAI<\/a>. In the new version of Alexa, Amazon promised a more conversational tone, similar to OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT voice mode<\/a> \u2014 but some beta users reported slow, stilted, and unhelpful responses. It also apparently has trouble turning on the lights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n